Babylonian baritone

Psalm 137 choreographs a scene where the Jews lie down and weep by the rivers of Babylon, as they remember Zion.

For those who aren’t particularly fond of opera, an aria about the sack of the Jewish temple might sound about right for an artistic interpretation of mourners’ wailing.

But those who do appreciate the medium will note the next few verses in Psalm 137, where the mourners are charged by their captors to sing. “How are we to sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land?” the Jewish exiled ask, echoing, perhaps, Theodor Adorno’s critique of poetry after Auschwitz. “If I forget you, o’ Jerusalem, may I forget my right hand. May my tongue stick to my palate, if I don’t remember you.”

In that light, the Washington National Opera’s latest interpretation of Giuseppe Verdi’s 1842 opera Nabucco — short for the biblical Nebuchadnezzar, who sacked the first Jewish Temple and the city of Jerusalem — makes a good deal of sense.

The plot synopsis notes the historical context of the opera: an “increasingly unbearable” Austrian domination of northern Italy, which Verdi compared to the Babylonian oppression of Israel. But the opera can’t be detached from its original context, even if it does introduce some interpretive errors.

Watching Nabucco, it’s easy to think one is seeing double. Both the Jewish high priest, Zaccaria (Burak Bilgili), and another priest (or Levite) wear priestly breastplates with 12 embedded gemstones, symbolizing the 12 sons of Jacob.

But the breastplate — called the choshen in Hebrew, or sometimes the urim v’tumim, which happens to be a component of the Yale University insignia — is supposed to be unique to the high priest.

That wasn’t the only inaccuracy in the opera’s costumes. The bible goes to great length to separate the temple from violence. Solomon, rather than his dad, was selected to manage the building of the temple, because David had too much blood on his hands, having killed Goliath and countless Philistines. And the stones of the temple were said to have been cut by the Shamir, which may have been a worm, to avoid using metal tools due to their suggestion of weapons and warfare.

Yet, Verdi’s and the National Opera’s high priest carries a knife around with him in the temple, and he uses it to threaten Nabucco’s daughter Fenena (Géraldine Chauvet), whom the Jews have taken captive. Even viewers who are familiar with the biblical passages about Nebuchadnezzar — from his military campaigns in the Holy Land to the description of his madness in the book of Daniel, which William Blake rendered so brilliantly — may find the libretto, by Temistocle Solera, tough to follow as it weaves through a love triangle (with Fenena, her sister Abigaille [Csilla Boross], and Ismaele [Sean Panikkar], a Jewish captain), and Abigaille’s political ascendancy.

But biblical misinterpretations aside, the music of Nabucco is very compelling, if often haunting. When Franco Vassallo (Nabucco), imprisoned, sings the solo Dio di Giuda (God of Judah) appealing to the Jewish god to save his daughter Fenena from a death sentence, it’s difficult to feel anything but compassion for Nabucco, despite his many sins. And Abigaille’s Salgo gia del trono aurato (I ascend the throne), which comes amid her deceptive maneuvering to usurp her dad’s power, is offset by her awareness that she’s a daughter of slaves playing dress up in the palace.

The opera seems to demand forgiveness for all of its characters, but one aspect of the National Opera version that some may decide not to be so generous about is the set. Thaddeus Strassberger, director and set designer, opted to build the set — and indeed the entire opera — around the original 1842 production of Nabucco at the Teatro alla Scala in Milan. The Kennedy Center stages is dressed up to suggest the original theater, and in the play-within-a-play concept, Strassberger has Austrian guards overseeing the 19th century opera patients entry into the theater before each act.

It’s a clever concept, which underscores how relevant the Babylonian exile can be today, but it also privileges the opera’s politics over its religious themes. Political messages are frequent fixtures in art. Is it too much to ask that artists occasionally allow religious works to speak as religious art?